Tuesday, 18 September 2018

The world has been overtaken by technology. It is apparent in everything you see around us. People are glued to their smart devices and computers that is has become second-nature for us humans now to check in on it now and then day in and day out. Even young ones are at ease in using smart devices and computers, especially that most homes and both public and private establishments now have Internet access. Most people are pretty comfortable navigating the web too. The lure of social media platforms and other online websites is hard to resist and everyone goes online these days almost every day now for just about all types of reasons you can think of.

While considered a bit bulky to be carried around, computers still reign supreme because they have essentially served as the backbone of modern society for quite some time now enabling for major and quick changes that we are now enjoying today and most likely many more will come in the near and far future as we now live in the digital age. Yet, no matter how familiar you are with computers, there are still many things that you really do not know about it. The World Wide Web can be highly informative and useful but its deep dark secrets can make you feel at ease once you even have an idea about their existence.

Your computer or router looks innocent enough. But it could be taking part in international crime without your knowledge.

That's if it is being used in a botnet, or a collection of computers that have had malicious software installed on them that allows someone to direct them as a group from afar. Security experts say that botnets are one of the many dangers that are posed to computers and their owners – and the opportunities to use them are growing all the time.

The problem of botnets was highlighted this week when multiple law enforcement agencies announced they had shut down the Andromeda botnet. That constellation of computers, spread all around the world, were being collectively controlled and put to work doing criminal tasks for their masters.

For instance, botnets are one of them. Some of you probably heard of it already while others remain clueless about what they are because it is a term you don’t easily encounter. Just what are botnets? It is just one of the many threats to one’s online security. It is common knowledge that the Internet is not exactly a safe place, to begin with. And botnet is one of those technologies that are used wrongly until today. You may be surprised that your very own device is also infected by botnets without you knowing. That’s how far advanced and discreet this nasty technology is and seeing how widely spread the Internet of Technology has become, virtually every one of us is in danger of botnets and the risks linger for who knows until when.

In the ever-growing realm of cybercrime, the botnet is another technology villain to give all computer users sleepless nights.

Defined as “a collection of internet-connected devices, including PCs, servers, mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices that are infected and controlled by malware”, these botnets will frequently infect an entire system while the owner or company remains completely unaware of their presence.

Botnet controllers are used by cyber-criminals to send out spam and ransomware, launch distributed denial-of-service attacks, commit e-banking fraud and attempt felony.

According to the Spamhaus Botnet Threat Report 2017, from the international non-profit organisation that tracks spam, phishing, and cyber-related threats, there are block listings for more than 9,500 botnet servers on 1,122 different networks.

You can really say that computers make the world go round and everything else connected to it. It won’t come as a surprise that web-enabled devices like your TV, radio, smartphone, home camera, and other appliances easily connect to the web. There are plenty of cybercriminals lurking on the web and that makes you and just about everyone else an easy victim. The only silver lining here perhaps is that you can actually track botnets and find out who operates them compared to other malwares like ransomware that are spreading like wildfire in this modern day and age. And it is just a wakeup call for us that whatever convenience we are now enjoying has a price to pay.

Wednesday, 12 September 2018

Your computer won’t always be brand new. You may have bought it shiny and sparkling new but it wears out the longer you use it. Even if you don’t use it that often every day, it still stores files and grow old every day the same way you do. And as such, it is inevitable that you face technical problems along the way. The problems are usually simple and easy to fix. A quick restart or shutdown of your device or a restart of the modem will usually do the job. However, some problems persist and can cause more headaches than you want it to be. It is even more infuriating if the problem lies on your hard drive because you can expect it to cost you more money than you’d like to spend on, actually.

Unfortunately, moving parts like hard drives will eventually fail on you because of the very fact that they move. Even newer ones like SSD’s (solid-state drives) fail although a bit longer than regular hard drives. These problems don’t come without notice, though. There are tell-tale signs to watch out for that gives away the possibility of it breaking down sooner rather than later. However, you need to be aware of them first before you can do something about preventing a hard drive failure that is looming on the horizon. Things like disappearing files, corrupted data, computer freezing, bad sectors, and unusual sounds emitted by your device are all warning signs that shouldn’t just be ignored easily because you’ll surely regret it soon enough.

Your hard drive hasn't been acting the same lately. It's starting to make clicking or screeching noises, it can't seem to find your files, and it's moving really slowly. It might be time to say farewell—but here's what you should do before it goes to the big data center in the sky.

Every hard drive dies eventually, and when it's near death, you'll see the signs: strange noises, corrupted files, crashing during boot, and very slow transfer speeds all point to the inevitable end. This is normal, especially after your drive is more than a few years old. On older spinning drives, moving parts like the motor can degrade over time, or the drives' magnetic sectors can go bad.

Newer solid-state drives (SSDs) don't have moving parts, but their storage cells degrade a little bit every time you write to them, meaning they too will eventually fail (though SSD reliability is much better than it used to be).

Now that you already know the warning signs, it is about time you get the problem diagnosed, preferably, by an expert in the field. Your device must be checked from within to find out the root cause of the problem. You can’t just tell it from face value. Of course, it makes perfect sense to check your computer for a possible malware or virus infection before deciding right away that it is a hard drive malfunction. One of the best ways to do this is to check for the S.M.A.R.T. status of your computer as mentioned in the above post since it is really helpful in detecting potential hard drive failures.

There are several different types of drive failure. There’s the obvious one, where your drive stops working entirely. Perhaps your computer doesn’t even recognize it when it starts up and you see a message saying your PC has no hard drive, or perhaps your computer begins booting and just can’t get through the boot process.

There are also more subtle drive failures, where the drive appears to be working…but there are problems. Your PC may occasionally freeze, you may hear unusual sounds from the drive, you may experience data corruption, or your computer may detect bad sectors on the drive.

Any sort of clicking noise from a mechanical drive is a bad sign. This indicates the head, which reads and writes the data from the platters on the drive, has failed. It’s best to shut down the drive completely to avoid further damage and use a professional data recovery service if you need your data back. You won’t hear any strange noises from a solid-state drive, as they have no moving parts.

A SMART check is effective but it has its flaws. Of course, by now you have already tried troubleshooting for the problem but it is still there. If the problem is tearing you apart and prevents you from accomplishing important tasks, it is about time you turn it over to an expert for a third-party analysis and most likely it will stay there if a problem is detected for repair and possible replacement of malfunctioning parts. A failing hard drive can still be prevented, so make it a habit to do routine checks on your system to prevent costly repairs and replacements especially if the problem can still be prevented.

Thursday, 6 September 2018

If you are a techno-phobic, now is definitely not the best time to be alive with technology being at the very core of our existence. You’ll be stressed just at the thought of having to keep up with all these digital changes taking place in front of your very eyes. You may be resistant for a while but it is truly your lost if you continue to resist and miss out on the benefits it offers that other people are now openly enjoying. It is even more important that you update yourself on these things if you are an entrepreneur because that is the only way for you to keep up with all the other businesses and survive. Technology has been the buzz for the past decade or so because it is both our present and future.

With the continued rise and popularity of the Internet of Things, there is no going back anymore. Big data is the hottest trend that is here to stay and you can expect more data to accumulate in no time since the IoT has made it possible for us to integrate technology to just about every aspect of our lives. But what are we supposed to do with all these data? That’s where infrastructures like Data Warehouses come in handy. We somehow need to make sense of all the data circulating both on and off the web. There are popular platforms that offer this service, so you can benefit the most from big data.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) starts invading the world around us, the stage is set for an ‘Analytics of Things’--a utopian world where big data analytics is not confined merely to solving business problems, but also upending the way business gets done.

Even before data started getting recognised as the ‘new oil’, enterprises outlined the need for a system that could handle the onset of ‘information explosion’. In 2006, Hadoop was born as an open source distributed storage and processing system spread across commodity hardware. The Hadoop framework led to the incubation of a large number of open source projects targeted at various aspects of data and analytics.

Data analytics is crucial in running and maintaining a business. You need to understand how people think and how to market your products properly to the right targets. However, what’s even more important is that you can save these data and have access to them whenever you need it. Data warehouses serve this purpose and allow entrepreneurs to make better and informed decisions in planning the direction the business will be taking. The market is big but data warehouses can capture the information you need and relevant to the success of your business, so make sure you do consider it early on.

One example of how big data tools can complement a data warehouse is an alarm company with Internet-connected sensors in homes across the country. There would be little value (and huge expense) in storing each sensor response in a SQL data warehouse, but that data could be retained in cheap storage in a data lake environment and then aggregated for use in the data warehouse. For instance, the company could define combinations of sensor device events that constitute a person locking up a home and departing. That aggregated event could be stored in the data warehouse in a fact table that records arrivals and departures.

Data warehouses are very specific, meaning it collects and stores data from specific targets enabling you to streamline the data you save and analyze. For increased efficiency and productivity, you can observe the following four tips, which are to come up with fact tables that summarize and filter IoT data, combine historical data with live data, make use of data science models that are readily available for your use, and establish a device monitoring data. To make your life easier, just hire professionals who can do the job for you and jumpstart your business in the right direction.

Technology can be scary at times but if you are well-guided and have an idea as to the path you are taking for your business, it becomes more bearable and the risks substantially lower. To ensure you can always have access to important data, your devices must always be in great shape. A broken device means a liability in your business and can lead to financial losses. Hard drives issues are some examples. When faced with a broken hard drive like https://www.harddriverecovery.org/seagate-data-recovery.html and https://www.harddriverecovery.org/raidcenter/raid-10-data-recovery.html, let the experts help you before you cause more damage to the initial injury.